Covid 19 CRISIS

The problem with the hands-off "get shots in arms" honor system @ninjacoco describes is that it favors rich people who know how to get their way, and leaves the working poor (black, latinos) in it's wake. I highly doubt it will turn out more efficient than the EU/Israeli approach of priority groups.
 
Thank fuck, of all places, the local pharmacy in the grocery store in my town has the vaccine, I can sign up online and get it hopefully soon.

YUS.

EDIT

So it's still a "check if your eligible" but the website says it will be free of charge. Fuck yeah, only a little bit longer.

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This reminds me, the shots my mom and I both got were free. On the websites I made the appointments on they said if you don't have insurance (like me) there's no charge but if you do have insurance there will be no copay. At no point were either of us asked, either on a form or by a person, about having insurance or not.

Is this more or less what having universal healthcare feels like? Because holy shit, I'll happily wait if it means I don't have to choose between just not seeing a doctor or scared shitless how I'm going to pay for it.
 
Is this more or less what having universal healthcare feels like?
Sort of, speaking from my German perspective with statutory (as opposed to private, which is optional) health insurance. We have these chip cards from our insurance providers that we have to give the receptionists to prove what organisations are our healthcare providers, but that’s it. There are no bills to pay, the doctors and hospitals deal directly with the providers.

Apart from dentistry, where coverage is often quite limited and it’s advisable to take out an additional policy, and optional treatments, that’s how it works for everything that’s considered essential. Along with the percentage of the insured people’s salaries that they take as premiums, the extent of coverage for non-essential treatments is the main way that our providers of statutory health insurance compete.
 
it works for everything that’s considered essential
Key word: considered. The criteria for that can be quite strange in parts.

That said, I'm mostly happy with the system. At least it won't leave me broke despite several chronic diseases I require regular treatment for.

To come back to the topic - my biggest concern with the Covid vaccination is if I'll have to take a day off to get it, or if I can declare that as sick leave. :D
 
my biggest concern with the Covid vaccination is if I'll have to take a day off to get it, or if I can declare that as sick leave. :D
I feel every employer should be happy to have their employees vaccinated ASAP with as little hassle as possible - so they should really be pushing you out the door to go get your shot...

yeah, I know :|
 
None of my past nor current employers forced me to take time off for doctor's appointments (even when the dental specialists at our university hospital fixed my botched root canal and I spent over a week combined in treatment), so I don't think the getting the covid shot will be different. If I end up on a waiting list I'll bring a folding chair and my laptop and work while waiting in line, just to pass the time.

EDIT: And yep, @Punisher Bass, that's exactly how universal healthcare feels like. There's a bit of waiting around, the system of what is considered essential and what not is eccentric at best and completely shambolic at it's worst, but in general you get the treatments and vaccinations you need without ever seeing a bill.
Or, in case of dental care, you get five pages of bills for each visit, splitting each step of the procedure between what's covered by universal healthcare and what is an optional extra. That being said, even with a super complicated specialist root canal treatment (five four-hour sessions plus prep and aftercare) to fix a botch job I did not even get close to the "7% of my available income" cutoff needed to be able to tax deduct the healthcare costs.
 
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Is this more or less what having universal healthcare feels like? Because holy shit, I'll happily wait if it means I don't have to choose between just not seeing a doctor or scared shitless how I'm going to pay for it.

This year's medical procedures for me so far...
Dentist checkup combined with regularly scheduled plaque removal: show up for appointment, stick card in their machine, wait five minutes, go in, go out.
Some weird infection, show up at GP ad-hoc, stick card, wait fifteen minutes, go in, get prescription, go out, stop by the pharmacy on walk back, pay 5€ copay for the drugs.

Monthly cost is somewhere in the 700€ range iirc and scales with income, split roughly halfway between my employer and my salary, income tax free... it's the upper limit. As someone without chronic diseases I'm a significant net payer in the system, but that's how insurance works. I'm not unhappy to pay because I'm happy to not require a lot of treatments :) (yet)
 
I saw this video a few days ago and it reminded me of how a few days before that I saw a couple of douchebros in my grocery store not wearing masks. The asshole in this particular video goes into several stores sans mask, and then proceeds to constantly stroke his chin pubes while touching everything he possibly can, he even goes so far as to pick up different things then rub them on said chin pubes.

I wish it was legal to beat people like this with a god damn crowbar, not just because what he's doing is fucking disgusting and putting people at risk, but not catching covid just emboldens them to act out even more.

 
The problem with the hands-off "get shots in arms" honor system @ninjacoco describes is that it favors rich people who know how to get their way, and leaves the working poor (black, latinos) in it's wake. I highly doubt it will turn out more efficient than the EU/Israeli approach of priority groups.
Oh, no doubt, but it's at least something if your state is a garbage fire. Dallas actually tried prioritizing its hardest-hit areas—typically minority-majority and lower-income—early on only to have the state government come down and forbid it: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/01/20/dallas-vaccine-plan-communities-of-color/

They weren't even holding back vaccines—they were just trying to place vaccination hubs in places that were easier for residents in those hardest-hit areas to reach. Our state government really, really hates local governance that they don't agree with, and of course anything that seeks to address inequality is on that list. "Small government" my ass. They spend more time meddling in individual cities' affairs than they did addressing the damn power grid failures that killed people. It's a disgusting, nakedly partisan disgrace that only punishes groups who've suffered disproportionately in this already.

I'm still very pro-shaming the hell out of people who break the honor system. That should be a life-destroying, actually-cancelled kind of heavy shaming where you end up being miserable everywhere you go. I know some scum will avoid the consequences they deserve, and that's disheartening but par for the course.

If the government refuses to address those inequalities, reach out to hard-hit groups and help folks navigate barriers to getting the vaccine (of which there are many, from pharmacy deserts to online signups), I guess the next-best thing is to keep moving towards herd immunity as quickly as possible. That'll eventually benefit everyone, including those who can't get the shot right away. The upside is that it looks like a lot of us who have gotten the vaccine have been helping others out who can't navigate the system for getting it. Yet again, we're having to step in when our state fails us. Texas in a nutshell!

Oh, and of course Texas asked about insurance on its form. I didn't even have my insurance card on me and there was no cost, so I don't even know why they asked? I ticked yes and didn't add extra info. Why is that question even there?

As for the guy @Punisher Bass posted, I hope he gets arrested for contaminating store items just like those idiots who licked ice cream did down here. Thanks for being stupid enough to post your crimes online, I guess. Have a bad day!
 
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Mainstream news outlets other than Germany's public broadcaster finally took up the "if vaccine manufacturers keep up their delivery commitments, all Germans can be fully (2x) vaccinated by end of August*" message. You know, the one I linked on Feb. 26th while our press was busy shouting IMPFDESASTER!
In additional good news, at least in Berlin vaccine uptake in the at-risk groups is as high as 85%.
As a side-effect this also means that my assumption of "enough vaccine for all who want it by June" goes out of the window, since it only assumed 70% uptake. But again, more vaccine coverage is tremendously good news.

*End of September if a vaccine for under-18s gets approved.

EDIT: In general, there will be two important milestones in any vaccination drive:
  • The moment when there's so many vaccinated people that the pandemic can't sustain itself any more (that's not herd immunity/eradication of covid, but having a lockdown-like effect without having to shut down any part of normal life). Early data from Israel puts this somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of the populace vaccinated. I am still 95% confident that the EU, the UK, and the US all will reach this point in June/July.
  • The moment when the vaccination dynamic will change from "demand is larger than supply" to "supply is larger than demand", i.e. when 99% of those who want to get a shot have gotten it. Then, the game changes from "managing expectations/demand" to "convincing the remaining people to get vaccinated". Again, research suggest this point to be at "70-ish percent of the populace" in most western societies. When this will happen is anybody's guess - I believe in Germany it will be slightly later than the pandemic faltering, maybe in August, simply because German society is fucking old (over-40s are more than 60% of the population) and research shows that vaccine uptake falls off a cliff in people younger than 40. Yet, working-age people mix enough that 80% vaccine uptake in over-40s hopefully will have a dampening effect on the pandemic in younger people as well.
 
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This is pretty cool of my pharmacy to do: https://www.fox7austin.com/news/tar...them&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=twitter

Also hell yeah, some hope that I can do trackrat things with my friends soon: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/health/covid-vaccine-cdc-guidelines.html

I swear to my gigantic, enormous, larger-than-everything balls that April 9—two weeks after shot number two—is friggin' circled on my calendar. IDK what I'll do, but it'll probably be boring like "loaf on Harris Hill's couch" or "have a beer outside my house."
 
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